Last Saturday, I played a game of Labyrinth with my nine year-old niece Penny. This classic Ravensburger game was published in 1986, the same year as the film Labyrinth starring David Bowie and a young Jennifer Connelly was released in theaters. I found myself wondering if there was a connection*.
I realized Penny probably didn’t know the film, so I told her, “Did you know that when I was a kid there was a really cool movie called Labyrinth with creatures from Jim Henson’s workshop?”
Penny was skeptical. “What’s the Henson workshop?”
I tried not to gasp. “Jim Henson created The Muppets. You know, like all the puppets on Sesame Street?”
Penny looked at me. “There are no puppets on Sesame Street,” she said, mildly annoyed.
“Penny,” I said, slightly panicked that I had spilled the beans. Then I remembered that she is starting fifth grade soon. “What do you think Elmo is?”
“Bro, I don’t know!” said Penny. “I barely even watched that show.”
I’m pretty sure that’s patently untrue. Which is more likely: that I’ve encountered a grown-up version of the one toddler immune to Elmo’s charms OR that young Penny’s awe of Elmo was so complete, that magical veil was never pierced - not even in retrospect?
The wonder about awe continues …
*Strangely, the connection between the game and film is pure coincidence.
What if awe — the small intake of breath we used to feel constantly as kids and barely register now — turns out to be a measurable, trainable, foundational human capacity we've been quietly starving ourselves of?
Nancy Martira
Clew Strategy
You can probably divide my childhood from adolescence into the moment when my personal hero evolved from Miss Piggy to Murphy Brown. Which is to say that I’ve loved The Muppets for a very long time. I heard about a new collaboration between PBS Kids and the Jim Henson company and knew that I’d check it out on Youtube. I didn’t expect to watch all twenty-seven minutes of it, but once we got to a free-spirited hedgehog named Roxy wearing overalls and driving a retro camper van, I was in.
The premise of the show, and of Keltner's work generally, is that awe isn't a luxury good. It's a basic human capacity that's been quietly atrophying. Children still have it on tap. Adults have largely forgotten what to do with it.
In his 2023 book Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder, Keltner makes the case that awe — the experience of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your current understanding — does measurable work on the body. It lowers inflammatory markers. It loosens rumination. It expands the boundary of who you consider "us." It is, in his framing, the emotion that pulls humans out of self-focus and into a larger story. Which is presumably why the people designing curricula for four-year-olds want to make sure they don't lose it.
Awe isn't a luxury good. It's a basic human capacity that's been quietly atrophying.
Roxy, a hedgehog from Kansas and Ronald, a pig from Washington D.C. Wowsabout, PBS Kids
The Artificial Awe Deficit
When you are four years old, the world is densely populated with things that stop you cold — a beetle on a leaf, a sudden snowfall, the sound of a tuba. By the time you're thirty-four, you've taught yourself to walk past most of it. The beetle is still there; you just don't see it anymore.
Most adult days are not engineered for awe. They're engineered for productivity (or guilt about being “unproductive.”) The unread count goes down, the to-do list gets shorter, the dishwasher gets unloaded. Sure, most of life is logistics — someone has to do the dishes — but when we focus on checking boxes and extending streaks, our days leave very little room for being stopped in your tracks.
What's interesting is that Keltner's research doesn't suggest we need bigger or rarer experiences to fix it. He doesn't say go to Antarctica, he says go for a walk and pay attention. It’s not that adults are living through a deficit of awe; we’ve just stopped noticing the things that used to spark joy.
"I don’t really like watches or fun chores or checklists or homework or anything like that at all!” Roxy, Wowsabout!
Collective Effervescence (a crowd at a concert, watching a sporting event together)
Nature
Music
Visual Design (art, machines, anything with elegant pattern)
Spirituality
Life and Death
Epiphany (the moment a tangle of ideas suddenly clicks into a new shape)
The list is satisfying because it both names what you already half-knew and gives you new corners to inspect. What strikes me about this list at a time when it feels like I’m sweating five dollar bills every time I leave the house is that almost all eight categories cost nothing. Awe isn't gated by money or geography. The only barrier is where we direct our attention.
The Smaller Self
One of Keltner's most consistent findings is that awe shrinks the self. Not in a dispiriting way, in a way that embiggens our spirit. When you stand under a redwood, watch a stranger help another stranger, or hit the part of the song where the strings come in, our perception of ourselves and our problems gets smaller.
Wowsabout understands this intuitively and isn't pitching wonder as a productivity tool or a self-improvement project (thank God.) It's offering kids the experience of becoming briefly less the center of their own universe, and noticing that the world is more interesting from there. That's a useful reminder at any age.
Photo by Stephen Hocking via Unsplash
Here are two small experiments to try:
The Awe Walk
Take a fifteen-minute walk this week with one rule: try to notice something that surprises you. Not a particular thing — just whatever catches you. Keltner's lab has run a version of this as a study with older adults; the "awe walk" group reported more positive emotion and felt less self-focused than the control group. The instruction is small, the effect is not. (If you need help, bring a kid or a dog!)
The One-Line Wow
For one week, at the end of each day, write a single sentence describing one moment that almost made you say "huh" or "wow." It doesn't have to be big. It just has to be honest. After seven days, read all seven sentences back to back. The point isn't to manufacture awe — it's to find out how many small wows you were walking past.
Photo by Jelleke Vanooteghem via Unsplash
The Wonder of Awe
My biggest takeaway from Keltner's body of work is the suggestion that awe isn't something that happens to you, it's something you participate in. Children participate in it constantly because they haven't yet learned to filter it out. Adults can re-enter it, but it takes a small act of attention — a willingness to be stopped and thrown off course.
The week before I was hanging out with Penny, I took my 10 year-old niece Caroline to Shakespeare in the Park (Albuquerque version.) Often, the best part of these excursions are the conversations we have in the car. At one point Caroline asked me, with great reverence in her voice, “Aunt Nancy, have you ever been to a Starbucks?” I gave the wrong answer of course, talking about how I had been to a Starbucks just that morning, but generally I like to support the local coffee place near our neighborhood. I'm sorry, Caroline. That was a lame answer. Next time, I’m skipping the drive-thru and I’ll go into the Starbucks to experience it as if for the first time. I’ll bring you and Penny with me, so I don’t get miss out on the awe.
The Question
When was the last time you let yourself stop and say "wow" — without checking your phone, without taking a picture, without rushing on to the next thing?
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And now for the Mystery Link! This week we've got one of my favorite musical numbers from Sesame Street and one from The Muppet Show. Look out for cameos from John Candy, Andrea Martin, Gladys Knight, Phil Donahue, Paul Simon, Itzhak Perlman, and more.
(or buy me a coffee.) Meet Nancy Martira. I'm a brand strategist and communications consultant who brings endless curiosity to every project. If you've got a challenge that needs a fresh, unexpected perspective, let's talk!
Communications consultant, brand strategist, & Wonder Work creator. Curious about everything from terrible orchestras to happiness algorithms. Feed your curiosity; starve the doom — one small idea at a time. Let's wonder!